L.B. Foster key supplier for San Francisco transit hub excavation

Written by
William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief

L.B. Foster Company has completed delivery of approximately 2,600 tons of 36-inch-diameter steel pipe to Balfour Beatty Infrastructure, Inc. for use as lateral shoring struts in the excavation of San Francisco’s new Transbay Transit Center.

Balfour Beatty required pipe in lengths from 40 feet to 70 feet with a unique wall thickness of 1.125 inches to 1.5 inches to support the steel wide-flange beams of the shoring walls inside the 60 foot deep excavation.

L.B. Foster contracted the material from the mill and delivered it to the Port of San Francisco. L.B. Foster’s piling professionals managed logistics from the port to a steel fabricator for additional finishing and transport back to the jobsite. “More than 160 truckloads of pipe as heavy as 17 tons each were required for the excavation of this signature transit project,” said Dan Schrager, L.B. Foster Construction Products Senior Sales Representative.

The multi-billion dollar Transbay Transit Center replaces the old bus terminal near San Francisco’s Embarcadero with a state-of-the -art regional hub that links the city to eight Bay Area counties and beyond with rail and bus transit systems. The new California High Speed Rail system will also travel from the Transbay Transit Center to Southern California once that ambitious project is completed. Construction of the new transit hub began in 2011, with completion currently scheduled for 2018.